Opinion|Reader’s opinion
The special treatment of fish farming must be stopped.
In the online pool fish farming at sea is the only activity that leads wastewater to the Baltic Sea, which is not required to clean the wastewater. Its waste water consists of uneaten feed dissolved in the water and fish excrement. The amount and quality of waste water is also not measured or monitored, unlike other point-like discharges.
Fish farming’s share of the phosphorus load that goes into waterways with wastewater in the whole of Finland is about 60 tons per year. The emission from the pulp and paper industry is about 120 tons per year. The benefits produced by fish farming are small compared to the emissions.
Blue-green algae blooms bright green in the Baltic Sea this summer as a sign of serious eutrophication. In countless projects in all coastal states, huge investments have been made to reduce phosphorus emissions. In order for everyone to be involved in this important work, all coastal states, including Finland, have concluded a binding convention on the protection of the marine environment of the Baltic Sea region, the so-called Helsinki Agreement (1974, 1992). It obliges the contracting countries to reduce the load from all emission sources.
Why fish farming is allowed to go upstream in Finland and is not required to clean wastewater? On the contrary, there are plans to significantly increase fish farming in the open sea, i.e. to increase the amount of phosphorus discharged from Finland into the Baltic Sea.
In the Archipelago Sea, the blue-green algae situation is very difficult due to the high phosphorus load. Fish farming causes by far the largest part of point-type phosphorus emissions in Northern Finland. Its phosphorus emissions in the area are considerable.
The companies’ share includes, among other things, the emissions of the Turku region’s wastewater treatment plant, which cleans the wastewater of 300,000 residents. Emissions from agriculture and forest processing are not included in point emissions. These have their own extensive programs to reduce them.
One an activity leading to large phosphorus emissions into the Baltic Sea, fish farming in net ponds, can no longer enjoy special treatment and deviate from the requirement for everyone else to clean the wastewater properly. For others, a phosphorus removal efficiency of 90–95 percent is required.
The cleaning of cities, church villages, holiday villages, industry and other waste water has been brought to a good level some time ago. For a long time, there have been precise regulations on the handling of livestock manure, and every summer cottage owner and resident of a scattered settlement area is required to clean wastewater. It’s time to demand from fish farms technology that cleans its waste water with the same efficiency as the waste water of other operators.
Heikki Lehtonen
Master of Science in Engineering, Turku
The reader’s opinions are speeches written by HS readers, which are selected and delivered by the HS editors. You can leave an opinion piece or familiarize yourself with the principles of the pieces at www.hs.fi/kiryotamielipidekeisuis/.
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